The Crapbox...Comic books found in the quarter bin or half-off store or the bargain box. The good, the bad and the really ugly. Get ready for a surprise. Updates EVERY Friday and Monday until the Crapbox runs dry. (never happen)

Sunday, March 29, 2015

The Fairer Sex, Part I: American Woman #2 (flip side is a Samwise short)

You know I’m
gonna leave you woman. Bye-bye, bye-bye

Antarctic
Press has made a name for themselves with their Warrior Nun and Gold Digger
series. The San Antonio
shop is still in business today and appears to be doing booming business with steampunk and zombie tales. This
was one of their lesser known titles and it has a very special place in the
crapbox. It is, without a doubt, one the shortest and most pointless series
I’ve ever read. I’ve read Razorguts and Rare Bit Fiends, so that last line says
a lot. American Woman’s entire run is two issues.

I can only
assume that issue 1 of American Woman (...get away from meee-he…) had an origin
story. Here we get no explanation of her powers, origins or who she really is.
What we get is a six page fight with shiny bubbles attached to the outside of a
building. About 80% of the action is told through the mouths of various news
reporters. We get two panels of American Woman (…mama, let me beeee-he… sorry,
I’ll stop now) thinking something and then the building blows up.

I wasn't aware she was speaking of the storyline at this point. Oh, and surprise, the
building is undamaged! By the end of this issue none of this will matter, trust me. Because of all the power she’s absorbed, AW gets covered in skyblue
energy and stars while flying off to parts unknown. It’s then that we are
introduced to the main villain of this issue.

The Mime. Not
a rip-off of Joker, DC lawyers. This guy doesn’t speak. He’s hated by
everyone. And he has invisible weapons. Like this little number: the invisible
WORLD-DESTROYING BOMB!

I’m totally
serious about that. And speaking of serious, Amercan Woman gets into a serious
chat with some guy she knows. Who cares what his name is, in less than four
pages, the issue and series is over. Here she is covered in blue sparkle stars.

Next we see
AW, she’s speaking at an Independence Day rally. The mime is there doing tricks
in the crowd. As usual the people are hurling insults at him. Meanwhile
American Woman spouts off stuff that sounds vaguely fascist like the line
below.

Except ours
is a nation built on individualism and freedom of speech and many other large concepts
that insure the right to dissent from majority opinion. Sieg Heil, American
Woman, Sieg Heil. She shouldn’t be up there anyway. She should be stopping the
mime, who is in the process of lighting the FUSE on the invisible PLANET
DESTROYING WORLD BOMB.

Yeah good
luck with all that, American Woman. If only Hulk Hogan-man there was our hero.
Boom!

Heh-hee! Well
there goes the neighborhood. No wait! It’s a WORLD DESTROYING BOMB.

American
Woman should turn in her hero license for this. I will say this: American Woman
is possibly the best hero parody I’ve ever read. What hero lets the villain
destroy the world. Better than All-Star Batman and Robin. That is suppose to be
a parody, right?

The Samwise
feature on the flipside of the comic was four pages long and the whole joke was ruined by the publisher putting the
pages out of order. Come on guys, you can’t count to four? You can’t put four
pages in sequence? Nitwits.